Previously: Jacob kissed Bella and she broke her hand punching him in the face. Also, Jasper and Emmett have a bet on how many people Bella’s going to kill in her first year of vamphood. Fuck everyone.
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Kirsti: Bella stands in front of her wardrobe doing the typical “I have nothing to wear to graduation!” rant. She’s planning on finding a top to go with her khaki skirt, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the fact that she owns a khaki skirt explains a lot about why she doesn’t have anything to wear.
Marines: Now, I don’t know if you wrote this recap before we spent time making fun of this khaki skirt or if you are just taking any opportunity to make fun of the khaki skirt. Either way: LOL.
Catherine: The only top that could go with a khaki skirt is made of fire. Burn it.
K: It’s literally the only option.
Conveniently, Alice turns up with a fancy box containing a brand new outfit. She hopes that it will make up for her not being able to find whoever broke into Bella’s house, and how if she can just see what’s happening in Seattle, she’ll be back to normal again. Mentioning the two things together makes Bella realise that maybe the two are related. Jesus H. Christ, how dumb are these people that it wouldn’t occur to anyone earlier?
Mari: I had to literally reread this whole part because I 100% thought we already knew these two things were connected. The fact that it’s treated as a damned revelation made me angry at their stupidity.
Annie: Yep, I basically assumed this was canon. I was super confused when this seemed to be new information.
Catherine: This series is amazing at drawing out these great ~~revelations~~ of Bella’s WAY longer than necessary. Which is why everyone comes off so dumb. We are over halfway through the book and the main character just figured out that there is a plot.
K: It makes me wonder if there are readers out there for whom this was entirely new information. And it makes me fear them one day being in positions of authority.
Alice asks why Bella would think that, and Bella informs her that it’s like Edward said – someone’s taking advantage of the holes in her future seeing to build an army of vampires and steal Bella’s stuff. It was a test, to see if they could get into Bella’s house and steal her scent to give to the army of newbies. Alice freaks. But our darling Bell-End’s reaction is this:
“As I processed the fact that someone has created an army of vampires – the army that had murdered dozens of people in Seattle – for the express purpose of destroying me, I felt a spasm of relief.”
Um. Not a normal reaction, girl.
Mari: I like that she clarifies that this army is killing lots of people before telling us she feels relieved. Meyer is definitely trolling us.
K: SERIOUSLY.
She’s relieved because it means that no one is trying to wipe out the Cullens. (C: omfg) Alice points out that this doesn’t change a thing because Bella’s one of them blah blah blah no one cares.
Charlie bangs on the door to ask if Bella’s ready. She says she needs more time and he stomps off. Alice senses that Edward is on his way and bails before he can read her mind and lose his shit. Bella puts on what Alice brought her – a “sweater and skirt ensemble” – and decides that it doesn’t matter how it looks because it’s going to be covered by her “ugly yellow polyester graduation robe” anyway. I’ve never been so glad to wear a school uniform in my life. Because Australian schools don’t do robes for year 12 graduation. You just wear full summer uniform.
Annie: Also. What fucking season is it? Sweater and long skirt? Under graduation robes? You’re going to overheat and die. Even in places more north.
Catherine: Khaki. KHAKI skirt. That can’t be made fun of enough, guys.
K: I suspect all of this stems from “I’m from Arizona, therefore everywhere else in the country is deemed to be sweater weather year-round.” But anyway.
Edward turns up and insta-knows that something’s wrong, but can’t ask Bella what it is because they’re riding to graduation with Charlie. Then we get HALF A PAGE about why they’re going to graduation with Charlie. Charlie looks at Edward sitting in the backseat of a police car and smirks.
Mari: Caught yourself a murderer and a predator there, Charlie. If only you knew.
K: Poor Charlie. The biggest catch of his career and he has no idea.
They get to graduation, and line up in alphabetical order. Bella’s behind Jessica and is, like, super shocked that Jessica’s being nice to her. I am too, because Bella tells us that Jessica “droned on and on, and I was sure that the sudden return of our friendship was due to graduation nostalgia and gratitude for the party invite…” Eric is valedictorian, and makes a speech about endings being beginnings which Bella dismisses as “trite nonsense.” Ouch.
Mari: Excuse you, Bella, but you are the bitch constantly going on and on about how magnets repel each other. You don’t get to dismiss anything as trite nonsense.
K: YUP.
Alice appears at the last minute and, in typical form, dances across the stage to claim her 5,000th diploma. Let’s all have a drink to celebrate Alice’s inability to walk places.
Bella feels like the ceremony is running on fast forward. Jacob, Billy and Charlie cheer as she walks across the stage. I continue to be confused, because SERIOUSLY?? My parents came to my graduation and that was it. My brother had school, and everyone only got two guest tickets anyway because there wasn’t enough space in the school hall for any more than that.
Mari: My high school graduation was held in the performing arts center of my city and we had like 5 tickets each. It was madness.
Annie: My high school graduation was… nice, I guess? Once I was clear to graduate, I was done with high school. You couldn’t have paid me to attend graduation. Haven’t set foot on the grounds of my high school since.
Catherine: I got to invite as many people as I wanted to mine. Of course it took place in my living room and the audience was mostly made up of my cats. I was homeschooled. I just wanted to be included in this.
K: I had a graduating class of 70, so it’s possible my experience is not that of other people.
Bella gets her diploma and goes to stand next to a sobbing Jessica. Everyone throws their ugly yellow hats in the air, and shockingly no one loses an eyeball. Jessica gives Bella a sob-filled “we have to keep in touch!” hug which Bella gives zero fucks about. Edward appears and Bella asks where Alice is. Apparently she ran off straight after the ceremony. Bella asks what she was thinking about to keep Edward out of her thoughts, and he says “She was translating the Battle Hymn of the Republic into Arabic, actually. When she finished that, she moved on to Korean sign language.” Not turning up is also a valid option, Alice. Just saying. (M: Who needs a 5,000th diploma anyway?)
Edward demands to know what Alice is keeping from him, and Bella says she’s only going to tell him because he’ll cancel the party and she thinks the party sounds like the worst thing of ever. She fills him in, and he goes even whiter than he already is. She says it’s totally fine because no one wants to hurt him or Alice or their parents, and GIRL. YOU ARE DUMB AS A BOX OF HAMMERS. (M: And at least a box of hammers have the potential to be useful…)
Charlie turns up to congratulate Bella, and Edward basically does a statue routine. Bella realises telling him at graduation was a fucking terrible idea (YOU THINK???) because he’s moved past fear to fury. Charlie asks where Bella wants to go for dinner, and invites Edward to come with them. He declines and storms off. Charlie’s surprised by the hostility because Edward’s always been creepily polite to him. I give zero fucks about any of this.
We get a full page of Bella complaining about how horrible dinner is before she heads out to the car while Charlie says goodbye to people. Edward pops up out of nowhere for some closed mouth kissing and to tell her that he’s got himself under control again. She says she’ll have Charlie drop her at Edward’s, and he says he’ll follow them there. He vanishes when Charlie turns up.
On the way to Edward’s, Bella tells Charlie that she’s glad she came to live with him. It would be a teeny bit feelsy if I didn’t know that she only thinks that because it meant she met Edward. He looks at her broken hand and says he should have taught her how to throw a punch so she could defend herself from unwanted kissing. He tells her to punch Jacob in the gut next time.
Annie: Everyone knows it’s a swift kick to the gonads, Charlie. You’re bad at this. But lol at the ‘next time’, like it’s inevitable that Jacob will be kissing her without consent again?
Catherine: Sure like: ‘lol, my daughter’s friend assaulted her but we still invited him to her graduation and I sat next to him for hours and probably acted completely normal and friendly. Hilarious’. Totally what you would expect out of a good father, right?
K: Absolutely.
Charlie struggles to find the turn off to Edward’s house in the dark and Bella briefly perks up because maybe everyone will get lost! But hahahaha, no. Alice has lined the trees along the three mile driveway with thousands of twinkle lights. Charlie laughs to himself as Bella sulks. He drops her off, and “With a sigh, I marched up the stairs to endure my party.” Wowsers. What a killjoy.
And thus, this completely pointless chapter is over. Seriously, this was 19 pages of Bella joining two dots and grumping her way through graduation. POINTLESS.
Em-dash count: 28
Ellipses count: 17
Next time on Eclipse: Bella probably ruins another party in Chapter 17.
I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
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I am a 30-something year-old human woman who lives in Maine. I'm a freelance writer who mostly spends time that I should be doing that, watching T.V. I also love reading and comic books way too much.